Starting Gate: The More You Think You Know ...

There are a lot of red-faded journalists and sideline pundits waking up with crow on their upper-lips from the large amounts of the dish they were served up by Democratic voters in New Hampshire yesterday. Present company included.

When we get it wrong, we really get it wrong. Barack Obama was supposed to cruise to a big victory in the first-in-the-nation primary after his Iowa bounce and launch a nearly unstoppable movement into the political stratosphere. Hillary Clinton's campaign was supposed to be on life-support, awaiting a long-shot emergency transfusion of new brain-trust and message surgery.

Not exactly. While predictions of a McCain win held, that's little solace for the otherwise shaken prediction business. It's nine long days into this new year but maybe we should all resolve to try and not project so much before the voters have actually spoken. How and why did it happen the way it did in New Hampshire yesterday? Still a lot of those questions left to be answered but here's a good starter menu:

CBSNews.com political consultant Monika L. McDermott has taken a trip through the network exit polls. Among other insightful digging, she has this to say about the Democratic race: Clinton held her own among late deciders, beating back the Obama surge and winning courtesy of a significant Granite State gender gap and support from other traditional wings of the Democratic Party.

And CBSNews.com Editorial Director Dick Meyer dissects the Clinton win this way: "The voters of New Hampshire hadn't written Clinton off at all. With drama worthy of New Hampshire's flamboyant political history, Senator Clinton repeated the epic comeback that sent her husband on his way to the White House in 1992. It was a squeaker, but it was a win."

But Meyer cautions: "So is Hillary Clinton the front-runner, the "inevitable" winner, once again? Probably not. She won New Hampshire by just a hair. The next crucial contest is South Carolina, where roughly half of the Democratic primary voters are African-American. And then there's the de facto national primary, Super Duper Tuesday, on February 5."

McDermott gives her analysis on the Republican race: "John McCain claimed victory in New Hampshire with a late surge of support and the votes of Republican primary voters dissatisfied with the Bush administration. Moderates and independents were a substantial portion of his base. Mitt Romney's second place finish was fueled by more traditional Republicans - conservatives and those who were positive about the Bush administration."

And I offer my take on what this means for the GOP going forward: "John McCain's New Hampshire win, a repeat of his 2000 victory, completes a breathtaking political comeback for the 71 year-old senator. And it adds a small measure of clarity to a Republican race that has been in a state of barely organized chaos for the past year. As the race steams toward the South Carolina primary on Jan. 19, Mitt Romney is on the ropes and John McCain, for the moment, is the front-runner."

Read, digest and ponder, for tomorrow we diet from further predictions.